This smartphone-controlled fridge can grow any fruit or vegetable

Imagine you want to make a salad for lunch — except you've run
out of greens. Normally, you'd need to run to the grocery store.

But with an Everblume, an automated box that
can grow produce indoors, you could just open the door and pick
some fresh leaves.

The Everblume is a hydroponic garden, which means that instead of
soil, the plants' roots sit in a bed of nutrient-rich
water. The conditions inside the box, from temperature to
lighting, are completely controlled by your smartphone.

Using LED lights and an algorithm designed by the Everblume
team, the device automatically sets up the ideal conditions
for a plant to thrive. While it grows, the box collects
data about its progress and adjusts the lighting,
temperature, CO2, and oxygen levels according to the
plant's needs.

The box is still in the development stage, and the team will
start beta-testing this summer, co-founder and engineer Mike
Morgan tells Tech Insider.

Everblume

Measuring 6 feet tall by 2.5 feet wide and 3 feet deep, the
prototype is about the size of a normal
refrigerator. Morgan and Everblume's
other co-founder, Aja Atwood, are still finalizing the
design, however, so it will likely go through more changes before
it hits the market.

To set up an Everblume, you plug it in, place your desired
seeds in a growing tray (which is equipped
with sensors) and add water and a
calcium-magnesium solution to a reservoir. Users
then select which type of plant they're growing in the app,
tap "grow;" and the box will set up the best environment.

If the box senses that your plants aren't doing well,
it will automatically adjust the conditions.

The reservoir periodically feeds the nutrient-rich
liquid to the plants. If you don't want to use
the nutrients that come with the Everblume, you can
substitute your own. You can also choose
whether to grow one large plant or several smaller plants on
the hydroponic bed.

The box connects to Wifi and pairs with Everblume's app,
which lets you control and monitor the plants' growth. You
can also manually adjust the temperature or nutrient levels
if you want to experiment with a vegetable's sweetness
or texture.

Everblume

Everblume

As of now, Morgan doesn't have an estimate of the
Everblume's retail cost. The team will sell a limited number of
beta units in coming months — those interested can
contact Morgan through Everblume's site — and plans
to launch a Kickstarter in September. The
creators also hope to garner private venture capital
investment.

An Everblume can grow any type of fruit, vegetable, or herb,
Atwood says. The team is currently testing cherry tomatoes,
and the next test will include herbs, like echinacea, chamomile,
and basil.

The team's tomato plant is now 30 inches high and ready
to bloom, Atwood says. It hasn't been harvested, so the team is
not sure of its yield yet.

The advantage of hydroponic farms is their ability to grow
produce in areas where it’s difficult to find fresh fruits and
vegetables. Compared to traditional farms, they
also require less space and a lot less maintenance to grow
crops.

And more — large and small — are popping up in cities
across the world.

A tray of greens at
Aerofarms in Newark, New Jersey.Leanna Garfield/Tech Insider

Another company called FarmedHere is building a
nationwide network of vertical farms, including
a 60,000-square-foot farmin Louisville, Kentucky.
And in April, the startup Infarm piloted
a mini hydroponic garden inside a grocery store in
Berlin.

For city dwellers who don't have space for backyard
gardens, an Everblume would let them grow produce whenever
and however they please, Atwood says.

"Quite frankly, it puts the power in the hands of the consumer,
and you don’t have to have a green thumb to enjoy the benefits,"
she says.